Scandal Recap: 'It's Getting Weird in Here'

ABC’s Scandal this Thursday hosted a killer meeting in the P&A conference room, while Olivia and Cyrus each took drastic measures to handle explosive situations.

SPY GAME | Crosby, a spook who once ran a super-black op dubbed B-613, races an envelope to the postwoman… and then proceeds to blow his brains out. The envelope, delivered to Olivia, contains a coded message indicating that the six spies who worked on B-613 are in jeopardy of being exposed, by an elusive uberhacker named Sarnoff. Olivia asks Huck, against his advisement, to “bring in” the other five, which he does via a coded message broadcast over a numbers channel. Soon enough, Melvin (Bernard!), Betsy (The Middleman!), “Wink” (Port Charles‘ Courtney), Paul and Huck’s ol’ pal Charlie show up, and the instant they deduce that one of them is on Sarnoff’s payroll they pull guns on each other.

As (a nervous) Harrison urges cooler heads to prevail, Olivia confronts Sarnoff’s mouthpiece, assuring him that if let loose, the six spies will find, torture and kill the counselor. He coughs up the leak’s Swiss bank account number, which points to Melvin. When Charlie goes to “tie up a loose end” and pop Melvin, Huck lets loose with an impassioned (well, impassioned for him) plea, about how each of them is just trying to find a normal life, and maybe love, too. The speech works… for a moment, until sharpshooter Wink puts a bullet in Mel’s forehead. And then the others swing into clean-up crew action. (“I’ll get the oil drum!”) The next morning, Liv is relieved to find Huck still in her orbit, and he reveals how his nickname “Spin” was short for “spinster,” in that he’d never find someone. But now he has Becky — provided her background check pans out!

Speaking of background checks….

HUSBANDS & LIES | The hour opened with Olivia walking back from a date with Edison (aka Senator Davis, with whom she once lived), as they debate Nixon/Watergate versus Clinton/”one blue dress.” But there will be no nightcap, Liv maintains. Instead, she enters her apartment and listens in on David and Abby, who are talking about Doyle Energy, pipelines and… Abs getting “a drawer.” (Awww.) Cyrus, meanwhile, is aghast to see husband James land a story on the front page of the paper, above the fold, decrying Hollis Doyle and quoting some of Cyrus’ pillow talk as a “source.” Cy promptly gets a visit from Doyle, who urges the Chief of Staff to “shut that noise down…. Put your wife in a leash.” So, while Cyrus engages in a bit of Damp Eyes and Breaking Voice Theater to prompt James to back off of future Doyle exposés, Olivia finds herself met by a tempting offer.

“It’s getting weird in here,” Harrison says, alluding to the office atmosphere. “What do you need?” Harrison says he owes Olivia, for being there for him when he landed behind bars back in the day; she counters she was just doing her job. “I’m not your job; I’m your family, I’m your gladiator,” he corrects. “What do you need?” After much hesitation, Olivia utters forth an assignment: “Abby and David can’t be together.” Harrison’s response: “Consider it handled.” Fed a clue about Abby’s past as a battered wife, Harrison first puts a bug in his colleague’s ear about checking into David’s background, and then he hands a wad of cash to a woman in a bar. Later, that woman — an ex of David’s — lies to Abby that he used to rough her up. Abby thus abruptly, adamantly ends things with David and then confesses her secret fling to Da Boss, who later breaks down and lets Edison into her apartment.

What did you think of “Spies Like Us”? Sad or surprised to see the Abby/David romance cut short so soon, and through such unscrupulous means? Happy to see Huck acknowledge the mark Becky has made on him?